Music plays an important role in our daily lives and is woven into the fabric of society. We listen to music while alone or in company, in a dance club or at home, through simple headphones or via high-end speakers, as background or as foreground, after we get up or before we go to bed. Music accompanies us when we are traveling, doing sports, shopping, working or relaxing. This omnipresence of music raises several questions: how does music affect our lives? What is the relation between the society we live in and the role, function, and position of music within that society? How is music influenced by and does music influence social, political, economic, technological, and multiple other developments?
Do these questions trigger you? Music and Society provides a thorough introduction to the various ways in which music and society are connected through engaging lectures, insightful interviews, challenging assignments, interesting readings, and of course a lot of musical examples. The course aims at increasing your insights on where, how and why we listen to music, how music contributes to shaping our identity, how music forms, expresses, and subverts political ideas, and how music affects our norms and values.

From the lesson

Music and Politics

In this module we will investigate and discuss the relation between music and politics: how music affects politics and how it is affected by politics. Music may support political organizations and governmental institutions, it has the power to discipline the behavior of groups and individuals, but it can also act as a form of protest against a political status quo or dominant (political) discourses.